Order & Chaos

Archiving or hoarding - the mother in Ruth Ozeki's new novel The Book of Form and Emptiness is overwhelmed by the newspaper cuttings she is supposed to categorise for her job. In his new history of indexes, Dennis Duncan tells us about why people were criticised as "index rakers" in the Restoration, and the links between Cicero, the idea of alphabetical ordering and a former Bishop of Lincoln. Saxophone player Alam Nathoo is helping Ruth Ozeki launch her novel at the Southbank Centre in London and he joins us to explore the ideas of structure and improvising in jazz music.

Ruth Ozeki launches her new novel The Book of Form and Emptiness at the Southbank Centre London alongside a performance by Alam Nathoo on October 7th. BBC Radio 3 is broadcasting a series of concerts from Southbank Centre London - all available to listen to on BBC Sounds. Dennis Duncan's book is called Index, A History of the You can hear him discussing title pages and marginalia in a Free Thinking episode called Book Parts and Difficulty https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006tnf and translation in an episode called Africa, Babel, China https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002h89

Producer: Luke Mulhall